ion with
regard to so singular a misfortune; but when day after day went by and
he did not allude to the matter, we got worked up into a fever of
excitement about it. One evening after Dennison had gone, we held a
kind of political meeting about it, at which all possible and
impossible methods of decapitation were suggested as the ones to which
Mrs. D. probably owed her extraordinary demise. I am sorry to add that
we so far forgot the grave character of the event as to lay small
wagers that it was done this way or that way; that it was accidental
or premeditated; that she had had a hand in it herself or that it was
wrought by circumstances beyond her control. All was mere conjecture,
however; but from that time Dennison, as the custodian of a secret
upon which we had staked our cash, was an object of more than usual
interest. It wasn't entirely that, either; aside from our paltry
wagers, we felt a consuming curiosity to know the truth for its own
sake. Each set himself to work to elicit the dread secret in some way;
and the misdirected ingenuity we developed was wonderful. All sorts
of pious devices were resorted to to entice poor Dennison into
clearing up the mystery. By a thousand indirect methods we sought to
entrap him into divulging all. History, fiction, poesy--all were laid
under contribution, and from Goliah down, through Charles I., to Sam
Spigger, a local celebrity who got his head entangled in mill
machinery, every one who had ever mourned the loss of a head received
his due share of attention during office hours. The regularity with
which we introduced, and the pertinacity with which we stuck to, this
one topic came near getting us all discharged; for one day the cashier
came out of his private office and intimated that if we valued our
situations the subject of hanging would afford us the means of
retaining them. He added that he always selected his subordinates with
an eye to their conversational abilities, but variety of subject was
as desirable, at times, as exhaustive treatment.

During all this discussion Dennison, albeit he had evinced from the
first a singular interest in the theme, and shirked not his fair share
of the conversation, never once seemed to understand that it had any
reference to himself. His frank truthful nature was quite unable to
detect the personal significance of the subject. It was plain that
nothing short of a definite inquiry would elicit the information we
were dying to obtai